Settling in Australia

I have been making plans to write something about my Australia venture for sometime now. Just the issue being that I can't make up my time to go about it :-) . The thought for writing something on this topic came up soon after I recieved the final go ahead for my Australian PR, which materialized last year. So, here are a few things which helped me in settling down here (these experiences are mostly related to Sydney and may differ vastly across the other Cities). This is going to be a series of blog posts.

The first thing to work on when you get your PR Visa is the essentials being provided by the Australian Government for Citizens and PR Holders. There is not an integrated site, which provides information on all the essential services being provided:
http://www.australia.gov.au/

Register yourself on this site (you need to just provide some essential details). The next step is to check the job sites (read the next article on Australia Jobs). Once you have uploaded and applied for numerous job opportunities which suit you. You might be called for a face-to-face. This is the appropriate time to make a quick short trip to Aussie Land. (if you have a PR Visa, you need to make atleast one trip in the first year of getting the same). Convert this trip to a pleasure and recursion trip, then you enjoy and complete what you came to do, without feeling the pinch of just having to visit for fulfilling your PR Visa requirement. Best would be if you shift over permenently, but as many would have other commitments, it might not be possible.

When you get to Australia, either you need to have friends and family to stay with or book yourself into a Hotel. A good place to go for this is http://www.hotels.com/, who have a good collection of Hotels for Australia. The other thing is to go around sites such as http://www.domain.com.au/ or http://www.realestate.com.au/ and search for a furnished appartment initially. There are many, which are available in and around Milson's Point and North Sydney. These places are near to the City, where the maximum jobs are available and they have some good restaurants and grocery shops for every need. I would recommend these for a short term lease (1-3 Months), and meanwhile look around for something more permanent and suitable for your needs. It is best to look for a furnished apartment for the initial 3-6 months, if you are planning to shift with Family, and then later get something much cheaper and/or nearer to your workplace. It is also a good idea to make the booking before you arrive, as then the burden of that money is reduced and you have a fair idea of exactly how much you have with you.

More on Jobs and Driving around in the next few blogs :-)

Indian Education!!

Seems like there is a lot going on on the Education System in India. I had written a short blog on this a long time back and thought would explore it more now that it has become a hot topic. So, would love to add my thoughts on it too. :-)
The education system here has evolved mostly around a few basic fields of interests - engineering and medical being the main in these. I would attribute the growing trend of these to the lure of a steady life and the money these offer. Parents are more enamored by the life they see of the few who have made it good and the stories they hear of the wealth made in these professions. Although, these days the trend is changing in the larger metros, we still find the young crowd being more attracted towards these professions. In regard to these professions only have risen the IIT's and IIM's of India. These are good institutes, but the basis of their teaching here is to make better people out of people who already are!! I ask what is the principle behind these institutes which make the person toil over exams and more practicals and then expect them to churn out the same which has been taught by 'rote/mugging' onto the jobs they take up. Yeah! sure these people are chosen few from the various exams which are initially conducted to chalk out the cream muggers from the average muggers. As aptly pointed out by a colleague, these guys destroy their creativity in trying to learn the various heavy books through which are educators are wanting to make us learn on topics which may have little or absolutely no value in the job life. Engineering colleges teach on what not subjects like Compilers and Operating Systems, and the person lands a job creating application software in Java, not a systems job of creating those OS or compiler products. Where are we taking the nation? People have pointed out that these are the premier institutes, but they are more in name than how things are taught. Nowadays the person who graduates from these is looking for more value to himself than to add value to the Organization. Attrition rates have risen and along with that so have the salaries of people engaged in those activities. I don't say that is bad from my prospective, but it is not a good thing also.
To cope up with these the creative try and emulate them; and they end up getting more frustrated and sending their siblings and offspring's on the same path where they saw the lesser frustration and more money. I have a friend in IIT doing her master's, all I hear the lament from her is she has an 'xam or a practical which is coming up and she is awake for the last 2-3 days working on it??!! Isn't that stifling the actual creative mind? The teachers these days don't have time to read the so called 'xams which the students are put through. So, they adopt a cardinal rule of the thumb. How long is the answer? Does it have any illustration and does it adhere to the kunji or answers that they had given the students in the class!!
If the student tries to be creative in the answers, he/she is punished by a lower grade or a negative marking.
On the topic of IIT's and IIM's, whom do they think they are churning out!! Ok, there are a few exceptions who after coming out apply their brains and come up with ideas, but is that enough? Are they really creative or just logically coming to conclusions from their brains which have become mechanical after all that 'rote/mugging' sessions? I think the later is more to the point. IIM graduates boast of big salary packages, but are they actually making a difference also? There is a comment on Joel's site [of Joel on Software fame] about MBA making the Organization bloated and fail!! I agree with him somewhat in that. We really do need to access the kind of education we are imparting and not gloat over the fact that Indian kids are doing better in maths and sciences than the American kids.

HR Woes

The major thing with HR in every Organization is that they are very vindictive. I have encountered HR and had major tiffs with them in almost every Organization and the only place where I found them to be accommodating was Macromedia and then later on in Solidcore. Here, the major reason was that all our activities were taken care of either by the Administrative Staff or by our Managers, who went by what we had to offer in our skills and not what we did in our previous companies and why we left and why and why... !!
The basic premise of the HR these days is to find out more on a psychological manner as to what is the nature of the person they wish to recruit. They have forgotten that the person might be more interested in getting his work done than to cater for their regular laments on the person not having a good degree or a good company name behind him. Now, I ask these people, do they think that their own company has such a good brand name? Why most of the companies these days are just coming up in their space and are almost unknown; why then do they go about seeking people who are coming from good brand names? The work being done is and should be the main concern and not the lure of a big brand name.
Then again there are those HR who do not even seem to care about what is going on with the people they have to get recruited. I encountered a similar fate in AMD, where the HR after informing me that I had got through and the offer was ready for me to sign on the dotted line, never got back to me. All he could say was - Oh! I was on leave [ok, you were, but atleast inform the next person that this candidate needs to be informed] or the MD is not available and I have to check with him [even when the last time he had said that the MD was on his way back the same day and he would give me a ring as soon as he came in]. Now this is not what I call professionalism, is it??!!

Then these people ask us as to why we are leaving the previous company, well! you are the guys who are keen on making me leave by offering a new post and better money??!! Why not leave? And then when we want to leave your company, you make all sorts of fuss about it and don't even allow us a decent exit. You want us to join the next day, but while leaving we need to give a thousand days advance notice and even then you create so many hurdles in the way that we are unable to peacefully and amicably exit. Why! That is all I wish to ask you guys!!

Job Interviews - Taking

Today was quite a hectic day. We had gone to Chandigarh for hiring a few people, and I woke up at 3 AM in the morning to get ready and reach Chandigarh at 1030 Hrs. As the interviews were going to start at 11. We had a lovely journey in a Innova with tubeless tires, one of which kept getting depleted of air and there seemed to be no way that it could be repaired until we got back to delhi, except that we had to keep getting air filled every time we saw a petrol station... :-)

The interviews went off well at the Picadilly in Sector 22. We even managed to select a couple, then had a good lunch, courtesy the HR Manager [along with a bottle of beer]. On moving back, just before Panipat, we got caught in a BIG jam, created due to the construction of the road!! Here the road is being widened by L&T and was full of traffic trying to get through the jam and creating more of a Jam in the process.

It was a LONGGGG day when I finally reached home around 2300 Hrs... that constitutes about 3 hours sleep if I sleep at 2300, as last night I slept at 0115 in the morning. But, here I am writing and updating this blog entry and talking to someone special... :-P

Bangalore - What it Holds!!

I had always been fascinated by the lure of Bangalore - A Software Company in every street and every third house housing another small startup, also along with these varied software and IT companies an Engineering/Arts College to match the growing needs of these upcoming companies; at places where even you would not think of.
That was the lure that bought me to Bangalore, when I was offered a job here. That illusion broke down when I arrived in Bangalore. Going everyday to Office from a place called HSR(Hosur-Sarjapur) layout on either the bike or by Bus; the first thing I realized was that it was not going to be anywhere near a easy task. What with having to face the daunting local and corporation buses and to top it all the unruly auto rickshaw drivers; who drove a hard bargain to get you to the destination of your choice at the most exorbitant rates that they could come up with. During one of these sorties after missing my bus that I found that if you ignore them when they say these exorbitant prices they automatically come down to the real rates at which it is reasonable to take an autorikshaw... :-(

The Bangalore that i arrived at was full of people trying to find a place - to park, to drive, to walk, to stop, to enjoy and to generally get on with work and life; the image I had in mind was completely different...
Fortunately for me I had a few like-minded friends with me and they made my first few days enjoyable, before I finally got down to the nitty-gritty gritty of what I had arrived at Bangalore for - Work!!!

Already too much has been said of the excellent traffic and the traffic conditions of our Dear Ole Bengalaru... So I thought I should also add my two bits... :-)

I have been in Bangalore for almost 18 months now and have seen the situation go down to the worst... by nature I am a foot traveler and enjoy the walk through the city where you can get to observe many things which you otherwise miss on. This was my way when I arrived to this city and started with going to my Office on foot. I used to enjoy these walks when I arrived in Bangalore. Those were the days when we used to go from the hostel in which I was staying to the Office building which was in Kormangala industrial area, the walk was a good 1 1/2 to 2 Kms and both used to enjoy the same, with the relatively cleaner air in the morning, when we used to either catch the bus going towards Raheja Arcade or walk it down if we were early enough (early used to be 0845 and late used to be 0900... :-) ). Then while coming back from Office we used to enjoy some time in Forum, which had just about opened up and then walk back, almost always. Then came the days that just after 39 days of coming to Bangalore, I changed the company I was working for and joined another which was just starting operations in India (the first center for development outside of the US). Here too I meet like-minded people who enjoyed the walk (not to the office, as that was in Whitefield area; on the ITPL road). When we got down at the Raheja Arcade, and walked it down a bit to either the Aiwa's or Forum building; 200 yards or so... :-). Here after having a snack or two we used to head back to our homes, me waiting for my friend working a few yards from Forum to join me so that we would then walk it down to the hostel.


Well! now back to the traffic area. The second reason for coming back walking from the location of my first company, was that the inner roads were cleaner and we could easily walk across without hearing the honking of horns and the smoke and smog of the vehicular traffic which used to be coming our way. This usually was the norm, until 2 months down the lane the roads were segregated and some even became 1 ways. The traffic volume increased and so did the problems related to it. We changed routes and went through the more quieter regions of Kormangala, which has some real good architectural beauties which seem to be left empty by their creators. I really enjoyed those days as compared to nowadays when all you hear is the honking and people getting irritated at the people who share the roads with them...

I have a lot more on this and there will be a second edition for this soon... :-)

Lazyness and Sleeping on Weekends!!

So, what do we all do these days, when we get our weekly breaks on the Saturdays and Sundays... for me it is SLEEP, and what I have heard from all those whom I have encountered till date, although my mates in Macromedia make that a habitual thing for most of the weekdays also... :-P

I was trying to get a consensus on this and found that some people actually get up early on Saturdays!!! And then I found out that these were the f(a)tness buffs... :-D They actually think that getting up real early on a weekend (something like 7 in the morning) and going for a walk/jog will actually turn then into f(i)t, well I am as yet to achieve that for now (the fit and the fatness regime) I am fat enough now and hopefully should be going on the fitness regime soon enough if my roomie's have their way and manage to lure me out to the cool clean environs of the morning air soon enough and at a regular pace, then I also think I will join in the ranks of those who think that waking up in weekends early is good... !!! :-)

Object Oriented Work!!

Well! High time it has been that I visited my page and continued on my Ramblings...
The past year has been a very stressful time with me on the tenterhooks all the time as I am VERY weak on OO concepts and that is what is the work that I am currently working on during the time that I have been employed in my present company... :-)

Actually the work began with me being recruited during the interview for a compiler post and then it being transformed to a OO QA role later sometime. I never knew when it hit me that I will also have to go the OO route for me to be competitive enough in the field. But Managers being what they are I was told to complete the work given and start with the current concepts of learning about OO. The concept stage was easy, but implementation took the cake. To add to the injury, we had team mates who thought they knew all the concepts and ideas and wanted us to not learn mor as then we would advance leaving them in the background... :-(

I suppose the work culture that I wanted and had developed is slowing getting eroded away and soon it will be time when I shall again have to resort to the last available weapon with me - CHANGE!!! :(

Work @ iGATE

Another day goes by without too much activity on my part. I have been put into the group for creating the properties file for the new devices sent by the client. The software is being developed for Nokia Client and is called the NOBS - Nokia One Browser Server. This will be a box which will deliver the content to any phone from the content providers place. So anyone who connects via GPS to the content provider [Hutch, Airtel] would be able to view the web pages on his phone. WAP would not be a requirement for these pages, they would be ordinary HTML pages, which would be converted to the respective size and shape for the phone which calls for the request.
The properties page is basically a set of files which determine how the phone looks like and what content and in what manner [size, etc.] to send to this particular phone.

This seems like a not-too-technical and not-too-mind-intensive work and I for the present am not liking it...

Had a treat from Mr. Nitin Mathur as he keeps on saying that I am earning more than him, even when I have not started with the Macromedia job as yet. I really enjoy it when he says that, but I think he is just ribbing me into treating him, so it feels good when i make him pick the tab for the same... :-)